News About Turkey | NAT

Buca, Phuket, and the Politics of Self-Sabotage

At a time when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is weaker than at any point in years—hemmed in by economic strain, shrinking social consent, and institutional and societal decay—the opposition should be tightening discipline and widening the moral gap. Instead, a growing list of municipal controversies is narrowing that gap and, paradoxically, stabilizing Erdoğan’s position. The controversy surrounding Görkem Duman is only the most recent example. While sanitation workers in Buca protested unpaid wages and the district slid into a garbage crisis, images of the mayor vacationing in Phuket with Sevcan Orhan dominated headlines. More damagingly, many voters appeared to learn for the first time through this episode that Orhan—long featured in municipal cultural events—was reportedly the mayor’s romantic partner, a revelation that reframed municipal concert spending and cultural programming in the public imagination. Buca is not an isolated case. It fits into a broader pattern of municipal governance controversies that have increasingly plagued CHP-run cities and diluted the opposition’s claim to ethical superiority. In İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) under Ekrem İmamoğlu, and across several major districts and municipal subsidiaries, there has been a steady flow of allegations, probes, and politically charged investigations—covering procurement tenders, consultancy contracts, hiring practices, and the opaque operations of municipal companies. Many of these files may be weaponized by the government, but politicization does not erase the underlying governance questions. In fact, ambiguity is often the point. The ruling bloc does not need convictions; it needs doubt. This matters because Erdoğan doesn’t always survive through performance; he often survives through comparison. Pro-government outlets then package each controversy into a simple morality play: workers unpaid, mayor abroad; streets overflowing, CHP elites vacationing. The goal is not to prove a case in court but to dominate the news cycle long enough to replace structural questions—prices, justice, corruption, institutional and societal collapse—with a single reframing: “They are no better.” In that environment, even a local scandal becomes national propaganda, recycled across headlines, talk shows, and social media to blunt the opposition’s core argument that it governs differently. The damage is structural. In systems where power is centralized and media is weaponized, opposition success depends on discipline and moral asymmetry—acting in ways that make it difficult for the regime to blur distinctions. A “pre-planned vacation” explanation cannot undo the symbolism of leaving during a wage crisis. And if the public comes to believe municipal resources were used—directly or indirectly—to benefit a mayor’s partner through cultural programming, the episode becomes more than bad optics: it becomes a credibility wound that spreads far beyond one district. This is devastating for an opposition whose legitimacy rests on being different. The tragedy is that Erdoğan no longer needs to win by persuasion. He can win by survival through equivalence. As long as voters believe corruption, favoritism, and arrogance are systemic rather than political choices, the incentive to risk change collapses. Disillusionment replaces hope. Timing makes everything worse. Turkey is not in a period of normal politics. Inflation is structural, institutions are hollowed out, and the social contract is fraying. In such an environment, opposition-run municipalities are not merely service providers; they are living prototypes of an alternative state. Every decision is symbolic. Every mistake is amplified. That is why scandals—even when unresolved, exaggerated, or legally unproven—carry disproportionate weight. A “pre-planned vacation,” a “procedurally legal tender,” or a “cultural event within budget” may all be defensible in isolation. But politics is cumulative. And cumulatively, these stories create a picture of an opposition that governs comfortably, not urgently—that manages power rather than challenges it. Erdoğan understands this. His greatest asset today is not the economy, ideology, or even repression. It is an opposition that repeatedly forgets that optics become policy under authoritarian pressure. From Buca to Istanbul, municipal controversies—whether rooted in misjudgment, poor communication, or genuine ethical lapses—are doing what Erdoğan himself struggles to do: normalizing cynicism and anesthetizing public anger. And as long as that continues, Erdoğan does not need to regain strength. He only needs the opposition to keep making it harder to believe that change would truly change anything. By: News About Turkey (NAT)